Tinkerbell Laughs
by Trogdor19
Summary: An expanded and revised version of scenes from 5x18, "Resident Evil." Recent events force Damon to decide if Elena is his divine punishment, or his reward. As always, it's her decision that will make or break him and he could never have predicted the choice she would make this time.
1. Tinkerbell Laughs

_Author's Note: This picks up in 5x18 Resident Evil, when Damon is sitting alone on the porch of the boarding house. _

_Thanks to my world-class beta, Goldnox, for degenerating into gibberish cursing at this chapter, because that shit was just funny, and for not letting gibberish cursing distract you from perfecting my comma usage, because you're just that good.  
_

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**Chapter 1: Tinkerbell Laughs**

**DAMON**

Words are unoriginal.

Every one of them has been fondled off a hundred thousand tongues, snuggled up to a whole whorehouse of modifiers and been slapped into line by punctuation of a dozen different stripes. In a language as old and bastardized as English, there's not a virgin syllable left.

And minds are just the sewer where over-used words collect to churn through the same few compulsive patterns, over and over and over again. When you're as old as I am, a truly new thought is so rare that when it comes, your brain stutters to a stop over making the translation.

For me, it is regret.

Six ancient letters whose weight has been enough to bring many men to their knees, including the one who shares my blood and my name.

It's a burden I've never shouldered before, because I'm fucking smarter than that. Guilt will never take you anywhere new.

I always skirted the darker tables where the other old vampires brooded over aged drink and antique theology, debating damnation and punishment, karma and sin and all the different shades of resurrection.

But whether or not I was listening, the universe was speaking.

It started when Maxfield shot me full of the Ripper virus, but even when the words came out of my mouth, I couldn't feel their weight yet.

_Karma. Karma is happening to me. _

To be honest, I still can't feel it. I can't feel any part of my body: not the thighs that bear my weight as I sit on this brick porch. Not the hands that hold a glass too light with liquor to wash away a single letter of the new word that fills my entire mind. Not the dick that acts like a dead thing until Elena's scent enters a room, or in the dark hours before dawn when I wake from dreams of her with pain pounding through every rock hard, unsatisfied inch of me.

I guess I should be comforted by the fact that unlike my brother's visions, those dreams belong just to me. But they feel stolen because she doesn't want me to touch her like that anymore, and for once it tastes wrong to savor the pleasure of the forbidden.

The life that I sit in today is my punishment for every forbidden thing that I've done.

Not because I wasn't sorry, and not because I didn't feel guilty: I think it's simpler than that.

It is cause and effect and no flimsy emotional reparations will ever hold back the power of that falling gavel. Call it whatever you want: the universe or God or fate or karma or Jiminy fucking Cricket, but for all my scoffing, there's something out there and it ain't Tinkerbell.* It doesn't give a fuck what I believe in, because it _is _and right now, it is fucking me over for every murder, every cruelty and lie and moment of pain that I've brought into this world.

The Ripper virus and losing Elena were just the beginning: all my brother's sufferings visited on my head so I could feel them for myself. Now I have to know that she's dreaming about him because all those nights she was with him, I wanted her to be dreaming about me.

Sometimes, she even was.

And even though I never placed a single dream of myself into her beautiful head, it turns out that Jesus wasn't blowing smoke. Apparently sins of the mind are as dark as sins of the fist, because sure as shit I'm getting paid back for both. In full.

It will get worse. I know this. And now, too late, I am _sorry. _

I don't know, or care, if I would have acted differently had I known there would be consequences. I just wish with everything in me that this wasn't happening to me. Or Elena, or Stefan, because they may be dreaming of paradise but by the look in their eyes their current address is located somewhere a fuck of a lot hotter.

Regret.

If I want it, it's there, smirking in the shadows like whatever shit is going to hit my personal fan tomorrow.

But because I've never placed a single ounce of those six letters on my shoulders before, I have no idea how to carry them now that I know I must. I don't know how to endure a punishment that can last forever.

And just like death, it doesn't matter if I know how to bear it because it is already done.

My cock twitches as her tentative footsteps touch the wood of the hallway behind me. I can't stop the painful twist of a smile that crosses my face as I lift my glass in a toast and take a long drink to divinely cruel timing.

Fuck you, Tinkerbell.

Her stride is a little shorter when she's nervous, and so each whisper of her boots brings her closer to me, but a few inches less each time than she would have traveled if she was certain. I forget to breathe, my heartbeat dropping once for every touch of her toe testing the way before her heel settles under her weight. How many too-short steps is she going to take in my direction this time? Will it be close enough that the pull of her feels like it is going to rip my heart clean out of my chest, or far enough away that she fills my eyes and my nose, but nothing else?

With the soft landing of her shoulder against brick, she stops in the doorway instead of taking her place next to me. Playing it safe, but not safe enough. Because for better or worse, that's my girl and that's how she's always been.

I take another drink.

"What are you doing out here?" Elena's voice is the kind of soft that slays my cynicism, not that it really matters because I'm too fucking bone tired to deflect anyway.

"Ah, you know..."

She does. She should. But then, if she really doesn't understand why I couldn't stay in the house and keep breathing air that might have touched her lips first, it's really just one more indication of why she's back to dreaming about my brother instead of me.

"Looking at the stars. Listening to the universe laughing at me." I tilt my chin back as if I were tracing the points of light that every human civilization has scoured for hints of meaning. All I can see is the blackness of the porch roof, but it doesn't matter because its complete lack of answers is the most honest omen I'm likely to get these days.

"Damon…" She comes closer, like she does every single time I try to use honesty to push her away.

"We were doomed from the beginning." I say it without a trace of self-pity, and the statement owes nothing to my new understanding of the reason for the bullshit that has become my life.

Before doppelgangers and prophecies, even before vampires and sibling rivalries, when it was just me and her and the empty road stretching out to either side of us, she was never the kind of girl who ends up with a guy like me.

She looked at me the same way both times when she first met me. On that dark road and when she took her first tentative step through the front door that right now lies at both our backs. Elena looked up at me and her eyes flared, thick lashes fluttering slightly with a combination of fascination and instinctive wariness. She knew I was the wrong thing, and she wanted me anyway, both times. That's how I know it was the truth, completely separate of everything that's ever happened between her and Stefan.

"We were always going to end up here," I remind her quietly, and instead of answering, she sits down next to me.

She sighs, pursing her lips like she does when she's frustrated with me and she knows that whatever words she chooses, it won't change what I think.

"Damon," she says, and even her first breath is different, like the tension drained out of us as soon as we crossed the barrier of the threshold. She talks to me like she used to: like we're what's real and everything else is bullshit. It feels too true to hurt so fucking much.

"They're just visions. After we find Markos, they'll stop."

She sounds as frustrated as I feel, but how can she suddenly be so certain when her feelings about my brother have been every shade of every fucking thing _but_ certain since she met him?

"And then what?" I turn my head to look at her and I feel much too old to act like a human right now, so I let my muscles slide too smoothly, unnaturally balanced like the vampire I am. It would be easier to pretend our only problem was Stefan. I almost miss those days. "We're friends? Can't wait."

She leans into me and my body takes the weight of her automatically, casually, and it's not until she lifts the glass from my hand that I remember she doesn't touch me this way anymore. I look down, already regretting the way my traitor fingers relinquished the whiskey to her without question.

I exhale, the sound of my breath lost behind her sigh, and I wish I were a little more sane. Because then, I wouldn't be sitting here with a DSM-V** diagnosis of a hard-on from the idea that her soft lips are parting to receive the rim of a cup that I just drank from.

I've moved too many times, packed too many trunks and boxes and saddlebags and rolling suitcases to give a shit about what I put inside of them. It wasn't until the first time Elena wore my clothes that I suddenly, roaringly, felt like they were _mine_.

And now I'm reduced to getting all caveman possessive over drinkware.

My fingers itch to snatch the highball back from her, but I don't dare because if I accidentally touch her once I won't be able to stop and I swore when I was just a boy that I'd never lay a hand on a woman that she didn't want me to put there.

It was a vow I broke many times, as it turned out, but not in bed. Never in bed.

I tilt my head just enough that I can no longer see her in my peripheral vision, and I wonder the exact moment when she stopped wanting my touch.

It wasn't the first time we broke up, or the second. It might have been when she told me that she couldn't let me drive her back to Whitmore. That might have been the day when the pain of me started to outweigh the pleasure I've always been able to give her.

I hear her voice, but the words don't matter. Soft and beautiful as they are, they're just the whistle of the gavel coming down on me.

"Hey," she says, touching my chin and I am absolutely the universe's bitch because when I hear the tiny catch of hurt in Elena's voice that always means she thinks I'm ignoring her, I murmur an answer before I can stop myself, my eyes lifting automatically to hers.

No part of my body understands that these familiar movements are an outlawed dance performed in a ballroom that's already burned to ashes.

And right now, her body must not remember either because her hand slips easily behind my neck, her fingernails combing through my hair fondly, thoughtlessly, like she does when she's reading beside me at night.

"The universe doesn't control anything," she says, a hint of frustrated sarcasm in her doe eyes that was never there before I teased her sense of humor back out of hiding again after she lost her parents. She tilts her head impatiently. "It's not real," she insists and I have to smile, because she's adorable and ridiculous in her staunch disbelief, just like I must have been.

And because the sweetness of her hand in my hair, the presence of every cell of her dangerous body next to mine, is more proof that the universe is real. And it is a vicious bitch.

Her eyes settle into mine like the click of a latch falling into place and I forget all about regret, and time, and sin because none of that exists between us.

Until I see the infinitesimal flare of her lashes when she remembers that she's not supposed to be doing this, that touching me leads her down paths she's no longer eager to explore.

My skin chills as her hand falls back to her side and she sighs.

And then her eyes go empty and frightened and mine snap protectively to the shadows around us, scanning for whatever enemy I'm about to kill for her. But even before my head finishes turning, I know where the enemy lies.

If I were Stefan, I would keep looking in the bushes, pretending this was something I could fight. Pretending that what was happening to her was something she would _want _me to fight.

But I'm not my brother, and I've never been a coward. I have only ever been stupidly, doggedly addicted to the ugly truth.

I look at Elena.

I flinch when I see her face. I was braced to see pleasure, a joyful smile or even the heavy-lidded distraction of a more sensual kind of enjoyment. But I'm never ready to see her in pain.

Her face is drawn taut, her whole body rigid as her hands clamp closed on the glass she stole from me. I reach for her, adrenaline surging in an impotent wave through my body that's designed flawlessly to protect with violence, but not from this kind of threat.

My hand snaps to a stop halfway between our bodies as I remember that she's dreaming about my brother. She must be. I don't know what the Travelers are making her think he's doing to her, to give her a reaction like this, but there's no way I'm risking her mind translating my touch into his.

Instead I clench my hands in my lap and then release them, forcing my body to relax so I won't frighten her and then slowly, deliberately, I lean my shoulder against hers, because I have to let her know that I'm here. That she's not alone in whatever they're doing to her.

As soon as I touch her, the glass in her hands shatters and she starts violently, her head whipping around.

"Hey," I say softly, and then my voice falls silent at the sight of her. The guilt in her eyes is all the proof I need that whatever kind of dream she was having? It wasn't a nightmare after all.

"Did I just…" she asks, and I look away but I can fucking _hear _the flush of embarrassment creeping up her neck.

And Enzo's footsteps coming out the front door.

I can't even scrape up a smile for the perfectly punishing timing of every part of this fucked up night.

"Yup," I say tightly, and don't elaborate because I'm sure the peanut gallery has plenty to report on the topic.

"That good, eh?" Enzo drawls, right on cue, and I wish like hell I could fly into a decent rage but this thing with Elena has been draining the life out of me, day by long fucking day and I can't even muster the energy for violence anymore.

This time, Elena's sigh is tight and unsteady and I know before she slaps her hands down on her thighs that she's furious.

"He's here. I know where Markos is."

My head swivels a little to follow her, my eyes narrowing. What the hell is she so pissed about? She probably just had upwards of fifteen dream orgasms, but it doesn't seem to have to have taken the edge off, because she's as grouchy as she always is when she's not getting laid.

Join the club, princess. But fair warning: the dues are a bitch.

"4620 Walnut Drive," she bites off.

Well, that's specific. What did the Travelers do, write it in glittery body paints across Dream Stefan's bare chest?

Elena's heels punch the floor as she storms past Enzo and even though I'm fed up to the teeth with wondering what she's feeling, my brain hasn't gotten the memo because it's clattering away on the problem without my permission. And so instead of doing something useful, like getting myself a drink or lighting my head on fire in the vampire version of a cosmic punishment fast forward, I sit here with two options laughing harshly in my face.

Option A: That particular special feature on the Gypsy Psychic Network wasn't a sexy little romp. It was something that Elena didn't want to see, something bad enough to scare her and piss her off, bad enough that she felt guilty because she knew it was something that would upset me, too.

Option B: It _was_ a sex dream, a fantasy about my brother so powerful and alluring that it left Elena spitting with frustration at the idea that she threw away her chance at a happy future with him by choosing me, because she knows there's no going back from that.

"Feel like killing anyone?" Enzo asks idly and I shove to my feet.

And even though I know that this next murder will only tip the karmic ledger further out of my favor, and that it won't fix a goddamn thing, I tell him, "Yup."

And I mean it.

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_*Tinkerbell is a fairy in Peter Pan , and the story has it that the more you believe in her, the more real she becomes. Damon's thought is that God is nothing like Tinkerbell because whether or not you believe in him, his judgment will reach you all the same. I think this is a specific interpretation of the character's beliefs about the divine that is rooted in this particular instant on the show, and not a belief he would hold in general, most of the time. _

_**The DSM-V is the book that catalogs all psychiatric diagnoses, aka illnesses of the mind. _

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_Author's Note: Stick around, folks, because if you know me at all, you know I can't let a Delena breakup go by without "fixing" it. We've still got two chapters left, so feel free to be enthusiastic with your "Author Follow" buttons, and if you get really excited, there's a favorite button you can take it out on, too. _

_If you need an exceptionally awesome one shot for 5x19, go revel in the poetically emotional roller coaster of Goldnox's "Lay Me Down," or try out Nightlightbright's "Forever, Finally" because it is sort of sweet and smutty Delena that's good for the kind of grinning that makes your face tired. _


	2. Tinkerbell Speaks

_Author's Note: In my head canon, Damon never would have kept the same bedspread and sheets after sleeping with Elena in his bed and then having her call it a "mistake." So despite the fact that the TVD art department didn't change it on the show, I did for this fic._

_This chapter is dedicated to Goldnox, for ruining my life. No, not for refusing to send me that "technical diagram" you hilariously tried to draw in Paint (aka fingerpainting for 80s kids on their enormous desktop PC's). Though Mr. Trogdor was crestfallen. But no, for the other crime of unspeakable brilliance and meanness, that I have only forgiven because you proceeded to save my life half an hour after ruining it, in a feat of quantum superpositioning rarely observed in humans. _

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**Chapter 2: Tinkerbell Speaks**

**ELENA**

After I said good night to Stefan, there was only one place I could go. I felt bruised by the day I'd just lived through, by every unbidden thought that had invaded my mind.

I knew the visions were over because I felt it the moment the Travelers' spell broke, the held-breath waiting feeling in my body finally letting me go. But even though they're gone, the house still haunts me. 4620 Walnut Drive felt safe, as much as I hate that I ever saw it. Its bright red pots and pans and cheery little egg timer reminded me of the lake house when I was a child: a place where nothing was ever so wrong that it couldn't be fixed.

I haven't felt truly safe like that since just before Katherine stole my body straight out of Damon's arms.

So I went to our room.

I know it's just his now, know that it was my choice to take my things and leave, but after everything that's happened I deserve to be able to let down my guard for a little while. Just an hour to take off my clothes and wrap myself in the scent and the soothing slide of sheets so expensive I wouldn't even know where to buy them.

Damon shouldn't find me that way. It would be cruel, to both of us, but I tell myself I'll get up and get dressed as soon as I hear him come home. I have to see him, to make sure Markos didn't hurt him. To do what little I can to take away the look that came into his eyes when he realized I was right next to him, but in my mind I was with Stefan, pushing the papers heedlessly off the kitchen counter the same way I spilled the books off a school desk in my fantasies about Damon at the parent teacher conference last week.

The door to our bedroom is closed and I turn the knob and slip inside, letting my eyes fall closed and my shoulders relax as tears threaten behind my lashes.

In my vision when I hugged Stefan, that little velvet box clutched between my fingers and his neck, I was deliriously happy. I had everything I'd ever wanted and there was absolutely nothing standing in my way to keep me from enjoying it. Weirdly, that was the only moment when it started to feel more like a dream than reality, because I've never felt that way in my entire life.

When I was falling in love with Stefan, I felt a little guilty for being happy in a world where my parents were dead. And the happiest I've ever been, the night I finally let myself claim Damon and we were together for the first time…even then the guilt of knowing that Stefan was hurting gnawed at me, even if sometimes I forgot it in the heat of the moment.

But that's life; complicated, painful life, and Stefan was right. We had our time. It was real and it was beautiful and ugly and scary and _God _we did love each other. So much.

And it was nothing at all like what I feel for his brother.

Sitting next to Damon tonight, my body was more relaxed than it's been in weeks. Even in sleep I toss and turn and my fingers clench tight, punching holes straight through my pillowcases. I don't know how much longer I can keep myself away from him, and every time I see him, it's harder to remember why I should even try.

I made a whole list of resolutions to change myself, neatly numbered in the new journal I bought after I got my body back from Katherine. I dutifully recorded goals for myself with a sublisting of what to do to live up to each one, every single day. I followed it to the letter for four days before I started to slack off, but even for those four days I never felt anything but miserable. I'm no better of a person apart from Damon than I was when I was with him. I don't know if he's had any more luck than I have. There haven't been any bodies, but every time I see him his voice is a little duller, and I miss the spark of the old Damon.

I take a deep breath, because I know at least his scent won't have changed. But no, something isn't right. I open my eyes, frowning. Damon could probably pinpoint the difference without having to resort to his sight, but I haven't been a vampire long enough to categorize scents the way he can.

Fortunately, the switch is easy to spot. The bedspread is glaringly light and so crisp that it must be brand new. I frown, confused, and venture a little closer, eyeing the blotchy polka dots that clash with the sleek swoops of the celtic knotwork on the headboard.

Since when does Damon like polka dots?

A heaviness quavers deep inside my gut and I take one more reluctant step, reaching out to twitch the top of the coverlet back.

White fabric glares out at me, a whole world away from the rich hazelnut cotton sheets and red satin pillowcases that we slept on the last time we were here.

I let the ugly comforter fall back into place, my hand rising shakily to my throat. I can't curl up and hide here, not beneath bedding he must have bought to erase the last trace of me from this room.

I turn toward the window, swallowing hard. I feel like I need to steady myself against something, but there's obviously nothing in this room I'm allowed to touch.

And somehow, I still can't bring myself to leave.

I always come back to this, come back to him, no matter how many ways I try to deny the ties between us.

_Yes. You have lost me forever. _

_Maybe that's the problem._

_I care about you, Damon. Which is why I have to let you go. _

_It's over. We're…over. _

We even _agreed_ this time, that it was best for us to be apart. The only person who seems to think we're good for each other is Stefan, as ironic as that is. And Stefan loves his brother so much that it's not like he's an unbiased audience.

But if it's the right thing to do, why is it that every time I try to push Damon out of my life I end up like a sleepwalker? Lately, I'm forever forgetting what I'm doing and staring blindly out of windows, the confusion so thick that it no longer forms into words but just congeals into the back of my throat until some crisis or another catapults us back together and the only thing I can do is try to cover the guilt of my relief by glaring at him.

I've given in to my feelings for him so many times, but never all the way. Never enough that I could escape that niggling doubt in the choice I'd made.

I hug my arms around myself and take a step closer to the flat black of the glass that stands between me and the forest beyond. But it's so dark that the glass is more like a mirror and the sight of my eyes, wide and troubled, sends something sharp arrowing through my body.

I'm an adult now. No one is responsible for my decisions but me and I need to face the fact that I'm not being honest with myself. I have a long list of excuses to stay away from Damon and every single one of them sounds hollow, frayed around the edges. None of them is the reason I keep coming back.

Or the reason I keep leaving.

I take a deep breath and close my eyes.

It's something about the sex. Not the pleasure that explodes like an atom bomb until I can't remember anything about the world around me. That's just Damon, his insane focus on my every reaction, the way he knows just when to back off and when to push, the way he never relaxes into playfulness until I've had at least my fourth orgasm.

No, it's about the way something blasts open in me every time I touch him: the way the me who is alone with him is richer, more passionate, and completely unafraid. It terrifies me because sex is my permission, but I think if no one else were looking, that girl would be me every moment of the day.

I swallow and pry my eyes open, my skin itchy as I long to flee back to my dorm room, or to burrow under Damon's blankets and pretend that he still wants me there. But I need to be strong, like him. Need to face the violence of what's between us that keeps twisting me to its will until I'm tied up in uncertain, frustrated knots, my feet carrying me away from Damon even as my heart drags me back. My friends keep trying to tell me what the right thing is, but it feels anything but right.

It's so easy for Caroline to condemn him, because she remembers the Damon who murdered our old history teacher, Mr. Tanner, but she wasn't there when the waitress's body hit the floor in the diner, my warning to both Salvatores that I was a monster who couldn't be saved. She remembers the Damon who killed Bonnie's friend Luka to save us from his spells, but she didn't see my face in the moment after I killed Connor, when I felt nothing but satisfaction.

She knows that Damon was the one who said we had to kill Jesse when he attacked. She doesn't bother to mention that it was me who drove the stake home. And Caroline never felt Damon's lips on her forehead, wishing her safe travels anywhere she wanted to go because that's how he loves: without conditions, without restrictions. Without safegards or boundaries or contingency plans.

I bite my lip, forcing myself to follow the thought to its inevitable conclusion, even though my stomach churns.

The truth is that we are more alike than I think anybody sees and the more I'm around him, the more obvious it becomes. But that would mean that the girl I've thought I was my whole life: the honor student, the cheerleader, the girl who curled into her window seat to write about how much she hated to break Matt's heart…none of those were really me.

It would mean that the girl my parents knew wasn't real.

The thought hits me like a hardball in the sternum and I sway a little, my toes curling tightly inside my shoes as I search for balance.

My image blurs in the glass as I blink back tears. I can sense the bed behind me where I've been that other version of myself, the wilder one who loves the scents of sex, who never rushes to shower afterward even though that's what polite people do. The one who likes to taste sweat and blood and leather straight from the skin of a man who would let me claw him all the way to the bone, his only reaction the aroused dilation of his beautiful eyes as he drives so hard into my body that it should scare me.

But it never does.

Is that girl the real me? And if Damon and I are bad together, what about _her_ and Damon?

My mind is so tired that it is fading into a sluggish kind of stillness and I stop breathing, stop shifting my weight, stop doing anything human. I don't know if I can stop running from Damon, still am not entirely sure I should.

What I am certain of is that Damon is still out there somewhere, doing whatever he has to do to protect me. And no matter how dangerous it is, I know he'll be back.

But mostly, I know that there is nowhere else in the world I can stand to be but in our room. I feel it so strongly that it's like I was placed here, and I don't even want to start to fight it. Even if I'm no longer welcome here. Even if it's bad for me. Even, God forgive me, if it's bad for him.

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_Author's Note: Hello, wonderful readers! Thanks for reading and supporting all this writing I can't seem to stop doing! One more chapter to this fic, my friends, and I think it might have to be that heartbreaking scene in the bedroom in 5x18, so click those Follow buttons if you believe I'll give you a better ending than the TVD writers did! _


	3. Tinkerbell Smiles

_Author's Note: I do not own the Vampire Diaries show or books, but I lifted some dialogue for this scene from 5x18 and started to change it as soon as Elena started acting like a brain dead bimbo. You can thank me later ;)_

_Dear Goldnox: thank you for the world's best hypothetical coffee cup collection, and teaching me how to make pot roast and for making fun of my "triceratops" words. But please stop making me stay up too late cackling at beta comments: I'm worried that Mr. Trogdor's face is going to stick in that long-suffering Yes-Goldnox-is-very-amusing-please-turn-off-the-light-now expression. _

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**Chapter 3: Tinkerbell Smiles**

**Damon**

Earlier tonight, I figured Markos and Enzo were enough punishment to pay the bill for any sinner. But when I mount the stairs and catch the faint scent of Elena's perfume drifting down from my room, I know that somebody didn't agree with me. And that someone has tiny wings and a wrath as big as the Red Sea.

I climb anyway, because I'm an idiot and I've rarely been strong enough to turn the other way when I knew Elena was near.

When I turn into the bedroom, the shape of her silhouette is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen and it hits me like the grill of a Mack truck. It seems like every time I see her lately, I can't help but wonder if it'll be the last time.

I clamp my arms across my chest to hide the trembling of my hands, but my knees aren't as strong as they need to be, either. I lean against the doorframe instead, playing it safe, but not safe enough, just like she did earlier.

I swallow roughly and remind myself that I don't have to do this. I don't have to keep letting her shred me.

"I think we need some rules here," I say and my voice is as torched as the inside of my chest, but I don't have a scrap of sarcasm left to cover up the damage she's done. "Because if I'm not allowed to drive you home, I definitely don't think you're allowed to ambush me in my bedroom." The last word is a dirty trick and it bruises my tongue to say it when we're standing on either side of the bed where we made what she called "mistakes."

She turns around and the sight of her face is even more dangerous than her back, because for an instant, she looks happy to see me, and I'm walking closer before I can consider how stupid that is.

"I just…I just wanted to say thank you. Whatever you did, it worked," she offers with the ghost of a smile that's as tired as I am.

Damon Salvatore, villain to the rescue. Happy to lie, cheat, steal and murder if it will get rid of your sweet dreams of my virtuous brother. Though in this case, all I had to do was bluff my way through My Big Fat Gypsy Town Takeover while a bunch of body snatchers chanted it up in the square and I pretended to know what the fuck was going on.

"Well, I'm sorry to tear you away from paradise," I hear myself say, and because today's been a bitch, I give myself full points for effort and ignore my only partial success at pretending I'm not a bitterly jealous ex-boyfriend.

"It _was _paradise, actually," she says ruefully, and with just a hint of bitterness to match my own.

The word snaps my resolve back into place and my hands tighten as I seethe, "I told you, I don't want to _know."_

"But you need to know," she insists, and my breath comes hissing out from between my teeth in irritated resignation because I know it's not the painfully empathetic Elena talking: it's a God who is pissed as hell at me for being an non-believer, and for failing to bend over and take my punishment like a good little boy. But even now, I don't want to take any part of that out on Elena, so she begins to outline my favorite nightmare before I can think of a way to stop her that doesn't involve breaking her beautiful neck.

"I saw a perfect life. Stefan and I were married and we had kids. It was everything that we wanted."

I close my eyes, very briefly, because what the fuck did I expect? I knew damned good and well that those were the paper dolls that starred in her happiest daydreams and I ought to be man enough to be able to listen to her say it. And how goddamn sad is it that when she talks about being happy, she sounds _surprised? _If that's the grade on my Good Boyfriend Report Card, it's no fucking wonder she fired me.

"Well, we can always ask Markos to put it back," I tell her tiredly, because I'm not enough of a masochist to state the obvious. The other genie who can grant all her wishes lives right across the house and he's just as much of a sucker for her doe eyes as I am.

"But it's not real." My gaze rips back to her face supernaturally fast, and dammit, she's looking at me _that way _again. Like she did on the porch. Like we're a team and she's sharing her secrets with me. Just me. "You and I?" she says, tilting her head closer. "We're messy, and complicated, but we're real."

Her present tense is killing me.

There is no we anymore and she knows it. She _agreed _to that, and she reminded me of it every time I tried to give her an out to a decision I thought we both hated. Why is she wavering _today,_ when the thought of her with my brother is scouring the inside of my head with every small-minded and selfish and shameful emotion I've ever had?

"And really bad for each other," I hurl at her, because if I don't, she will. Sooner or later, she always does. "Did you forget that part?"

She's nodding in tiny little jerks but every other piece of her body shouts of denial, like this is nothing she's ever heard before, like she hasn't said it herself.

"Yeah…" she fumbles, and then finishes weakly, "but I still need you in my life."

Fury rises up in me and I have to stop, my eyes flaring as I fight against the curse that wants to rip out of my helpless mouth in protest.

Fuck this.

Okay, so maybe there _are _rules for this screwed up world that I've been rattling around in for so long. Commandments even. And okay, maybe I've broken them all enough times that it can only be expressed with exponents. But I'm not Stefan and I don't care if I have _earned _it, I'm through lying down and taking whatever shit the universe wants to throw at me.

"As friends, right?"

My sarcastic laugh has no sound, and pain echoes in her eyes like it hurts her anyway.

"No." I say it to her, and I say it to God, and I say it to myself, because temptation is a steeply slippery slope for an old sinner like me. "No, Elena, I can't be your friend. It's too damn hard."

And fuck _punishment,_ because I've been good to her. Maybe I haven't been good _for _her but I have never mistreated my girl and I don't deserve the kind of pain she can inflict on me. I start to turn away.

"Damon…"

Her voice is tiny and I dig deep for the balls I used to have before I met her. I can't die, so I can't afford to let my life hurt this much because I will do unforgivable things, _be _unforgivable things and no one on this earth needs the kind of destruction I know I'm perfectly capable of wreaking.

"No, I'm serious, Elena. I can't see you anymore. I don't want to hear your voice, I don't want to talk to you, and I sure as hell don't want to be your friend." It feels better than it should to say that, to take the twisted, painful pleasure I get from seeing her and cut myself off from it, once and for all, like an addict flushing their stash down the toilet in their last, desperate moment of sanity before the withdrawals take over.

She's staring at me, her mouth slightly open but no breath entering or exiting her body and it feels like I'd have to tear my eyeballs out not to care about that.

But not caring is exactly what I'm going to have to learn to do.

The air breaks and slips out of her lungs, her eyes dropping to the floor as her mouth quirks in a rueful little twist that is nothing like a smile. "Stefan was right," she says, almost to herself.

Something bursts inside my head and I whirl, throwing my arms out so hard that if anything had been in my way, the force would have shattered it to dust.

"Of fucking course he was! He's your white knight, the hero of your happy little Traveler fairy tale, right? Well, go, Elena." I'm turning back to her like my body is a magnet and whoever is controlling it, it is sure as fuck isn't me, because I'm out of here. "Go!" I half-roar. "Run back into his arms. It's not like I'm standing in your way. Not anymore." My voice slips on the last word and crumbles into something dry and ruined and I should be humiliated that she heard that, but I can't fucking help it anymore.

Elena flinches, and I see her legs tense, but she holds her ground, looking so small that I could almost feel like a bastard for yelling at her but I don't, I _won't_. I've tried to be the hero for her, I've tried to be the villain. I've tried God damned everything and now there is nothing but empty space between us that will only get bigger with every breath.

"Stefan said that you can be in love with someone, or you can be friends with them," she says, and peeks up at me. Her eyes are afraid but her lips form a smile, something warm and almost fond. "Stefan," she says firmly, "is my friend."

Shock runs through me, leaving me rooted in place though I couldn't have said why. There's something about her voice but I can't-

"Bully for him," I finally manage to mutter.

She takes a step forward, her heel touching the floor before her toes because this time, she's not testing the path that lies in front of her before she takes it. My ears register the change in the sound of her progress but my mind refuses to name it.

Hope is the trap of a cruel God and I'm done falling for that one.

"I stood in this room and asked you to love me enough to let me go," she says, fresh tears glittering in the rich brown of her eyes. "And you _did._" Her voice breaks, and I almost break with it.

I lock my knees so I won't go to her, so I won't try to comfort her with an embrace that she doesn't want.

"But I love you too much to let _you_ go, Damon," she says, the words so tormented by tears that I have to run them through my mind three times before I'm sure, absolutely _sure _that I heard her right.

"Elena…" I warn, the syllables wavering dangerously but she doesn't let me scare her off.

She collides with my chest, knocking all the air out of me and _fuck me_, but I don't want it back. My foolish arms lock around her tiny body and my idiot cheek drops to press itself against her hair and my rock stupid cock is hurling itself against my zipper like a wild animal stuck in the world's smallest cage.

"Don't do the right thing," she rushes out. "Please."

"Is that your print-it-on-a-coffee mug life advice, Gilbert?" I growl. "Because it could use a beta pass."

She gasps a sob into my shirt and punches me in the side without really letting me go and okay, yeah, I probably deserved that and if I still had an inch of synaptic space upstairs that wasn't hanging up its "Out Of Order" sign, I'd be shutting my fucking mouth and devouring this moment like the last meal that it is.

"Don't let me go," she begs and my throat clogs up until I can't even swallow against the mix of hope and terror that's pinning my head to Tinkerbell's chopping block. "Because I don't think it's you I've been running from."

She pulls back so she can see me, her eyes like pure voltage through every nerve in my body.

"I think you're the only one who can handle me."

The words slap me with a sound that rings in my ears like laughter and I let her go, forcing a step back.

"_Handle_ you?" I scoff. "You must be kidding me. You've been doing exactly as you damn well pleased every moment since I met you."

"I know," she says, dead pale, and the words the barest wisp of sound. I fight the urge to close my door so she'll have privacy for whatever it is she has to say. If my brother's in the house, he'll hear it anyway and the last fucking thing I need is enforced alone time with a hundred and fifteen pounds of my own personal Kryptonite. "I've been lying," she says. "To everyone."

She catches both my hands and I wish I would have shut the door when I had a chance because then no one else could see that I'm too weak to even pretend to push her away.

"I told Stefan I didn't want to be a vampire," she says desperately. "I told him I wanted kids, wanted to be a mother, wanted to be _normal _because after my parents died that's all I could think about." She shakes her head, her shiny hair tangling as it rubs over the soft cotton of her shirt and I want to smooth it through my fingers, let it waterfall across my chest and I force myself to focus because frolicking in fantasyland isn't going to do me any favors right now. "But it wasn't really being normal that I missed. It was being _okay._"

My gaze catch hers, and as if the simple eye contact plants a picture in my head, I suddenly know exactly what she means. It is the quiet of my father reading and my mother knitting while I listened to the crackling of the fire and built little cabins on the rug in front of the hearth with the kindling. It is the small breath Elena lets out when she drops her head onto one of my feather pillows. It is Stefan's quietest smile, when he's giving me one of his irritatingly knowing looks. It is the emptiness of the basement cell.

"I never actually wanted to be normal," she says like she's confessing something terrible. "I wanted to be fast, and strong, not someone who had to be protected all the time. I wanted to be special." She squeezes my hands, almost wincing. "Like you and Stefan. And I didn't want to die."

"Well no shit," I say bluntly, and then try to soften my voice. "After all the graves you've seen… But that doesn't mean you have to be happy about being a vampire, doesn't mean you didn't still want kids. It's okay to admit that," I tell her, because no one else will and I may only be her asshole ex-boyfriend but she needs someone right now and I'm not going to leave her like this.

But she's already shaking her head. "There was a look…a kind of gentle smile that my mom had when she looked at Jeremy and me. That's what I wanted about motherhood. But come on, Damon." Her eyes nail mine. "Let's not pretend, okay? Because I had a chance to be a mom. No, I had the _responsibility _to be one, for Jeremy, and what did I do? I went to college. I ignored him and I did exactly what I wanted." Her fingers tense in mine even as her thumbs smooth almost apologetically over my knuckles. "I acted like breaking up with you was what was best for Jeremy, even though you're the only one since Ric died who ever gave him any boundaries, any real guidance at all."

My eyebrows pop because I don't know _what _to say to that. Elena's never given me any reason to think that when I laid it down to Jeremy, she thought it was anything but me being an ass.

She tilts her head, tears shimmering damply on her cheeks where they've fallen and she's completely ignored them in favor of watching me. Something primitive swells in my chest at the sight of that, but I keep my damn mouth clamped shut.

"What I was really doing is punishing myself," she says softly, "for not being who I thought I needed to be. But I'm through with that, because I can't stand the way it's hurting you. And the truth, Damon–" She half-laughs, the sound so forceful that it's like she's choking on the relief of it. "The truthis that I'm _not_ ashamed of who you are. And I want to stop being ashamed of who I am."

My hands tighten in hers until I must be hurting her but she doesn't flinch. I feel like my body can't hold the tension that's rattling through every space inside of me so I open my mouth and say, "I killed Aaron Whitmore."

She doesn't blink. "I know," she says, "and Damon, I _want _him to be alive again. I want him to have a second chance at building a family, the same as I had. But I don't want to keep pretending that I don't get it."

My face twists. "Get it?" I sneer. "Get what? The mindset of an unrepentant sociopath? Sorry, Elena, but I think you ditched too many of your psych classes first semester to even start to get a toehold on that one."

I'm still holding her hands because I can't make myself let go and right now, I feel every inch of the insane that I'm trying to convince her that I am.

"Every person you've hurt since you met me," she says quietly, "was because you had your switch off, because you were protecting someone else, or because I hurt you so much that you couldn't handle it."

I open my mouth to argue and she strokes my knuckles so gently that I forget everything I was going to say.

"I understand," Elena says simply.

Awe spirals warmly from my scalp, down through the stiff muscles of my face, and opens up the hard space between my ribs until I feel myself start to breathe again.

I believe her.

She widens our hands and steps closer to me, closer than anyone is allowed to be these days, so all I can breathe is her scent and all I can see is her eyes and she must be my hell because the most exquisite torment always begins with pleasure.

Elena tilts her head back so that I can feel the whisper of her plea as the air carrying it brushes my lips.

"Please," she says, "give me a chance to stop hurting you."

When the pain comes, it roars like nothing I've ever felt, lighting every molecule in my body in glorious, infinite suffering. Her face blurs before me and I don't understand why until I feel the sharp edges of the knot that is drawing tight around my throat and I want to beg.

Please let me kill a hundred Jessicas, a thousand Lexis, and a million Aarons right now, rather than let Elena see me cry.

But like all my prayers, this one is met with utter silence. And then Elena touches my face, her palm so comfortable on the curve of my cheek that it is the cruelest thing I've ever felt.

Because I was never going to be able to say no.

I nod into the bursting silence that surrounds us and _God, yes, _she kisses me, her eyes falling shut and our tears rubbing slick and warm between our lips.

She kisses me like she never does when anyone is watching, her teeth as hot as her tongue in my mouth, the button on my pants surrendering to a sharp tug and release of defeated threads and every inch of our skin screaming when it collides.

Elena kisses me like she doesn't even know how to spell the word "friends."

I carry her to our bed and she flinches as her bottom hits the surface, hissing. I rear back in alarm, but she just rips off the bedspread that I brought home from Target–fucking _Target –_without even looking at it until I woke up with its starchy, weird scent in my nose the next morning.

She fucks me on the bare mattress, the fabric rubbing red burns into her bare knees and the flexing muscles in my thighs, my shoulder blades when she holds me down. I'll never be able to get rid of the scent of her now without throwing out the whole damn bed, but it doesn't matter anymore. Strands of her hair rip out by the roots when I pull her closer and my fangs prickle at the feeling of it tangled around my fingers like rings, like the knots of a commitment to each other that we cannot break.

Not with words or murders or all the good intentions in the world.

At some point, I realize vaguely that the door to the hallway stands wide open and I couldn't care less, even if Enzo returned from the bar and Stefan stopped by for a chat and Jeremy came over to grab a pair of jeans that he forgot and Ric popped in through the increasingly friable veil between here and Bonnie's little terrarium of supernatural souls. I don't give a shit who sees me with Elena, and I don't give half a damn what thought crosses their mind when they see it.

The only thing I care about, the only thing I've ever really cared about, is that when I explode and heat rushes out of my body and into hers, she gasps and her eyes go soft and satisfied like this is the moment she wanted.

Like this is her new "okay."

I come down from our sexual whirlwind into a world of her textures: satiny olive-toned skin and the velvet tangles of earthy brown, the tickle of her weightless breath on my chin as she whispers the same three words to me, over and over and over again like they've been pent up inside of her for her whole life. I want to say it back but language defeats me and my arms only tighten, my splayed hand rubbing clumsily up the long line of her lower back, adoring the firm flex of her shoulders and the elegant line of her neck.

All her weight rests on me and it is the lightest I have ever felt.

When she finally moves, I blink lazily and tuck a hand underneath my head, blowing the feather of a destroyed pillow away from my nose as I watch her slide off the bed. I expect her to head for the shower, but instead, she strolls stark naked into the hallway.

I smile, bemused but unconcerned, and a moment later she returns with a rich crimson blanket that I had on the bed this summer. She gives it a confident shake that settles it across the sprawl of my naked limbs, giving the bottom hem a tug when it fails to cover my toes to her liking.

I smirk crookedly. "Worried I'm going to start losing parts to frostbite?"

She retrieves a couple of undamaged pillows from the floor and crawls into bed beside me, ignoring my teasing.

"I don't really like spinach salad," she announces, which is news to me because I've seen her eat dozens of them at the Grill. "It tastes like lawn clippings and I know blueberries are supposed to be superfood, but they taste like Skittles dipped in facial toner."

"If this is your hint for me to go and get the ice cream, you're out of luck," I tell her, settling my head onto the pillow she hands me. "I stopped keeping it around when you moved out."

She shoves her hair back and rolls onto her stomach, propping her chin onto her hand so her bare breasts thrust forward in a way that should be filed under "d" for distracting as fuck. "Can you tell from a blood bag whether the blood comes from a boy or a girl?"

I blink and run those words through my brain again. "Um, no. Why?"

"I can," she says, and her chin lifts defensively. "I like the blood from men the best. It tastes…stronger."

My dick flexes beneath the cover of the blanket and I eye my girlfriend with a combination of curiosity and reluctant admiration. "How do you know you're right about which is which?"

"Because I remember the difference," she says, biting her lip briefly with just a flash of the trepidation of the old Elena. "From when we first practiced Snatch, Eat, Erase." She pushes the blanket away so she can wiggle her head up onto my stomach. "And I never liked Anna. I know everybody thought she was all innocent and sweet and just missed Pearl, but she was too intense with Jeremy. I think she would have gone all stalkery with him when he finally tried to break up with her."

She turns her head, her fingers toying idly with the line of hair leading down from my naval as she falls silent. My cock swells a little more below the concealing line of the blanket, hoping for her attention.

"If you're looking for a confessional, you might have taken a wrong turn at the brimstone," I say lightly, watching the dark back of her head as it rises and falls with my every breath. I love the way her body looks, stretched out and comfortable next to mine. I love it so fucking much it makes me feel a little sick.

She rolls over until she can see me again, her cheek landing softly on the skin just below my heart. "I've never said any of these things aloud," she admits quietly. "And I want to. Is that okay?"

My hand steals down to cup the back of her head securely and my thumb strokes over her hair, memorizing the texture of it. "It is," I promise her, "every kind of okay."

She smiles, a light coming slowly into her eyes that I could never get tired of seeing.

"So does this mean you've always secretly loved Quentin Tarantino movies?" I prompt. "And porn? Really dirty porn?"

She crinkles her nose. "Ew, no. Quentin Tarantino is a psychopath."

I waggle my eyebrows. "No protest to the porn? I have a really big…flatscreen."

She blushes, and I grin because I kind of like that this new, ballsy version of my girl still gets embarrassed when I say the "p" word.

She wriggles up my chest with a movement that sends all the blood in my body pumping hard in a southerly direction. "I never wanted to watch porn because I knew Stefan or Jeremy might hear," she whispers. "But if you rented us a hotel room…" she beams and I nearly go unconscious from blood loss to the brain when I see the look in her eyes. "You could bring all your favorite movies and I'd watch on the biggest screen you wanted."

I slide my hand down her back and cup the swell of her bottom, rocking her more tightly against me. "You want the romantic ones or the hard-core ones?" I purr into her ear, barely holding back a chuckle when she swallows audibly.

"Um…I'm not really sure," she admits.

I growl a groan and roll her underneath me, the soft fabric of the blanket rubbing sensually between our skin. "Tell you what," I offer, nibbling at her earlobe.

"Mm-hmm?" she squeaks breathlessly.

"I'll give you a demonstration of each and you can make up your mind after that. How does that sound?"

I drop my head, laying a single, chaste kiss in the hollow at the base of her throat and letting my lips linger until she can feel exactly how much they want to be there.

Her answer never makes it all the way into words, but I know exactly what it would be anyway, and in the end, I show her each of her options twice. Just for good measure.

This time when we finish, I'm too exquisitely exhausted to move but she curls up on my chest like a kitten and whispers to me all the secrets she's been keeping about herself. A few surprise me, but most of them don't, and not a single one of them changes a thing about how much I love her.

The only difference is that this time, neither of us thinks that's a problem.

Eventually, when her voice starts to slow and she begins to run out of new truths to share, I'm left almost wishing I had some to give to her. But Elena already knows me. She doesn't know everywhere I've been, or everything I've done, but she knows the result.

And yet as her eyes slip closed and I feel the blessing of her familiar warmth resting over my whole body, I think of one thing and I tuck her hair back from her ear so I can whisper it to her, this single new thought that has changed me today.

"I think I believe in Tinkerbell," I murmur to the love of my life. "But the bitch works in mysterious ways."

* * *

_Author's Note: I think I might believe in Tinkerbell a little bit, too. Because a whim to start watching a vampire TV show has changed the entire path I want to take in life. Because fans like you were willing to love the way I wrote these fictional fanged creatures as much as you loved them onscreen. _

_I am completely, utterly humbled at the lengths some of you have gone to this week to help me with my original fiction, and silently floored at the idea that _any_ of you would take time that you need for a hundred other things and spend it on writing a review that is really a wish for me to attain the biggest dream I've ever had in my life. None of you have ever met me, and you did that for me anyway. I will never, never forget that. _


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